Fort Worth considers street upkeep fee that could cost residents $110 annually

The city of Fort Worth could be tacking on a new household fee to fix up roads.

A new report submitted by transportation officials shows the city’s proposed street maintenance fee would cost residents an average of $110 a year, to be spent solely on road repairs in city limits.

Drive through some Fort Worth streets and you can see them: orange barrels, potholes and patched-up roadways.

“If the roads aren’t maintained well, it creates a safety hazard,” said Rusty Fuller, president of the North Fort Worth Alliance.

The city of Fort Worth is responsible for maintaining more than 8,300 miles of roads, and its yearly budget is facing a shortfall of more than $60 million to cover the cost of repairing those roads.

Fort Worth is considering a new strategy to meet those expenses: a proposed street maintenance fee that would cost residents an average of $110 each year.

“It’s better to maintain the roads than it is to try to rebuild them,” Fuller told NBC5. “It’s just like your car.”

Some Fort Worth residents understood the need for the fee, saying they believed the annual cost would be worth it in exchange for driving on safer streets.

Others told NBC5 they had concerns.

“I just hope it doesn’t raise my taxes,” said Jacob Alcala. “They’re already high enough as it is.”

In a report to the Fort Worth City Council this week, city staff said the street maintenance fee would bring average annual household fees for Fort Worth residents to a cost of around $1,293.

That would equal the average annual household service cost in Arlington, and leave Fort Worth paying slightly more than Dallas residents’ annual average cost of $1,281.

Currently, the city of Fort Worth’s average annual service fees are $1,183 per household. City staff said that gave Fort Worth the second-lowest household services cost of the 10 largest cities in Texas, with only San Antonio residents paying less annually on average at $1,111.

While they understood the need to continually fix up the city’s roads, some Fort Worth taxpayers wanted the city to find another way to pay the bill.

“It’s a burden on us, the average citizen, asking for $110 extra on top of what else we have to pay,” Alcala said. “It’s becoming a lot.”

NBC 5 reached out to the city to ask for a timetable of when the street maintenance fee could take effect.

“The timeline will depend on when we achieve several milestones in the process, however, our previously communicated target was to implement the potential fee as early as late 2024,” a city spokesperson responded.